On Sauerkraut Boulevard, Hard Feelings for a New Hotel

Kathy Jolowicz, a neighborhood historian born on East 76th Street, is an unapologetically nostalgic booster of Yorkville, the once largely German-speaking neighborhood on the Upper East Side. Ms. Jolowicz, 66, remembers the 1940's and 50's, when East 86th Street was packed with so many German restaurants and dance halls it was known as Sauerkraut Boulevard. She remembers the smell of sauerbraten and the voice of a family friend who sang opera at the Cafe Wienecke.

Most of old Yorkville has passed into history. So when representatives of Marriott International approached Ms. Jolowicz late last year looking for cultural lore they might use for events celebrating the opening of a new hotel on 92nd Street near First Avenue this spring, she had one question: Does your hotel's name include the word Yorkville?

When they told her it did not, she was upset enough to start a letter-writing campaign addressed to the new hotel's management. The company, she argued, ought to preserve Yorkville's legacy in the name of its new hotel. Currently its unwieldy designation is Courtyard by Marriott Manhattan/Upper East Side, an East River Hotel.

"Yorkville was not only an area, it was an era," Ms. Jolowicz said. "And I don't think it should be forgotten. It was an internationally famous landmark."

Kathy Duffy, the spokeswoman for the Marriott's New York City hotels, said that the new hotel's literature had already been printed bearing the longer name, and that it would remain unchanged. "We have absolutely nothing against the Yorkville neighborhood -- in fact, we embrace it," she added, noting that the hotel had not ruled out acknowledging Yorkville's history in a grand-opening event.

The Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts joined in Ms. Jolowicz's campaign, as did Henry Z. Steinway, a Yorkville resident who is the patriarch of the famous piano-making family, and K. Jacob Ruppert, whose great-great-grandfather founded the Jacob Ruppert Brewery on Third Avenue and East 90th Street in 1867.

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"The German-American history of Yorkville has been reduced to a footnote," said Mr. Ruppert, whose family's name and neighborhood have been commemorated on the site of the brewery since the 1970's, when the Ruppert and Yorkville Towers apartments were built there. "I would just love some kid to see the name Yorkville on the hotel and ask: 'Yorkville? What's Yorkville?' and have his question answered."

Across the street from the hotel on a recent Wednesday, Vanessa Rodriguez, a Berkeley College freshman, was chatting with three friends, who all said that they knew the area as Yorkville.

But had the women ever heard about Yorkville's German-American past? All four shook their heads. "Not that I recall," Ms. Rodriguez said. "I never heard nothing like that."